


not a mistake

by 4cky



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers, im sorry if i didnt do the characters particularly well i just had to write this, remember when akechi was like "i wish we'd met years earlier" and i was like "well shit now i gotta"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:24:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4cky/pseuds/4cky
Summary: an alternate universe fic where Akira Kurusu meets Goro Akechi years earlier than he actually did.





	not a mistake

He decides to take a new route home today after grocery shopping. Living with his aunt and uncle in the city while he goes to cram school over the summer isn’t terribly different from living with his parents, but he doesn’t mind. Living in his life with hands-off guardians was just something he was used to, he supposed. 

As he walks down the new street, staring at the brick walls covered in sprawling ivy, he runs into someone he was certain wasn’t there before (perhaps he should wear his glasses more often, his mother always did chide him on that). Akira Kurusu nearly drops the carton of eggs he’d bought for the fried omelette his aunt always packed in his lunch for cram school, when he realizes that he knows this guy. He’s one of his classmates at the cram school, though he always keeps to himself. The boy he spoke of looked bewildered, to say the least. As if he’d been walking somewhere and ended up halfway across town, entirely by accident. That sort of confusion didn’t fit his usually pleasant face. “Are you alright?”

The question seemed to snap him back to reality. “I’m more worried about those eggs you’re carrying! It’d be terrible for either of us to get egg on our face.” He paused, as if waiting for laughter, so Akira chuckled at the joke. He hoped it didn’t come off as forced. There was something that was stilted in the other boy’s behavior, and he came off as if he were faking it. 

“They’re fine, thanks for worrying. But… did you want me to take you to a doctor or something? You seem out of it.”

The other boy shook his head, “No, I’m fine, promise! No need to worry.”

“Then lemme at least take you to my uncle’s apartment, if you have time? You look like you’ve been studying too hard.”

It was a simple question, one that could have been answered with a simple yes or no. But the way the other guy’s eyebrows knit together, as though he was trying to struggle through a terribly difficult math problem, told Akira that this question wasn’t that easy for him to answer. “I’m… sorry, I’m busy. I should probably get back to Tamura-san’s place before it gets too late in the day.”

It was obvious enough that he should have left well enough alone, but that wasn’t the way he did anything. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, “Could I get your contact info, maybe? So let me know when you get home.” The other boy gave him a strange look, but the two of them exchanged information. “‘Akechi’, huh?”

“I could say the same for you, ‘Kurusu’,” He chuckled once, if only to himself, “I’ll let you know when I get home though. Promise.”

At least _that_ didn’t sound fake. Akira watched as the the other boy walked away, his vision going from clear to blurry as he did so, and resumed his walk back to his own home.

 

~~~~~

 

Akechi sends him an email, as he promised he would. The manner is a little unusual (he sends Akira a picture of the view from his window, accompanied by the message of ‘it’s a good night’), but he’s glad to hear from the previously dazed brunet nonetheless. In a show of solidarity, he supposes, he sends a picture of the view from outside his own window: a small balcony with an empty laundry hamper and winding alleyways below. They chat a little, about the weather, or class assignments that may or may not have been assigned, but nothing particularly in-depth. Akechi eventually bids him goodnight, and that’s that.

 

~~~~~

 

Akira has never realized just how… alone, the other boy was, not until he started paying attention to him. Sure, he was pleasant enough to the instructors, helpful to the students when they asked him for some advice or help, but he never really spoke to anyone. Never had anyone he sat or chatted with as he ate lunch. Was that why Akira was so motivated to try to talk to him that day they ran into each other? “Wanna eat together?”

“That’s alright. I enjoy eating on my own, anyways. It gives me time to reflect,” reflect on what, he could only guess. So he remained in his seat, adjacent to the other boy, eating his omelette and octopus-shaped sausages while Akechi ate a spartan meal of rice with pickled plum. He gives the other boy a sidelong glance, an acknowledgement of ‘you can have some of mine if you want’ but he never says it. Never broaches the subject. 

So instead they sit, not exactly side by side, eating, alone but together, neither with a word on their lips. 

 

~~~~~

 

The fluffy headed boy finds himself walking home with the other boy on more than one occasion. It’s nothing particularly eventful, their conversations rarely leading into more than the homework assignments or the opinions of some of the teachers. That’s when the other boy asks, “Do you pity me?"

He must have looked confused, because Akechi continued, “Do you hang out with me because you’re sad for me? Because you think the other kids hate me or something equally stupid?”

There’s a bitterness in the glare he shoots at Akira that chills him to the bone; probably because he knows he isn’t faking it. He doesn’t have time to think of anything to say aside from, “I like making friends.”

“What?”

“I like making friends with people,” he shrugs, thinking nothing else about the matter, “did you not want to be friends?”

He doesn’t look back at him again, not to glare, or to look confused. Nothing. “Oh. I see.” As though he wasn’t certain how to process the information of being someone’s ‘friend’. His voice drops, apparently not wanting anyone else (or perhaps, just anyone at all) to hear, “People… don’t do that. I’m a burden on them, why would anyone want to?”

The topic is heavy and his classmate doesn’t even know how to approach the subject. So he just avoids it altogether, “I saw you had a bike the other day. Do you go cycling a lot?”

“Oh, yeah, I really like it, actually,” his eyes suddenly lit up more brightly than the farsighted boy had ever seen. It was like a switch had been flipped in him, as he started to talk about something he actually gave a damn about, “I really like the way it feels when you’re pedalling up a hill and then you finally get to the top and it’s like everything else you were doing led up to that one moment. Like every time you thought you were going to give up doesn’t matter, cause you actually got to the top!” His mouth split into a genuinely happy smile, before he apparently decided such openness would’ve been odd and tranquilized his face, “Uh, do you have any hobbies like that?”

“Reading,” it wasn’t nearly the same, but getting through a difficult book always filled him with a feeling of accomplishment that was hard to explain to friends. He gave his friend his own smile of being able to talk about something he enjoyed, without verbally stepping on his toes. They got so into their conversation that he’d nearly forgotten to turn at the appropriate stop, and he hurried with his goodbye as he headed back home. 

 

~~~~~

 

Akechi misses class one day, and Akira assumes that’s because he’s ill. He misses a second day, and he starts to worry. He sends his friend a message, a simple, “Are you doing alright?”

He waits nearly all day for the response, something back from him that says, “I’m fine.” There’s a long pause, and while he knows that his friend is likely fine, there was something definitely worrying about the fact he was taking so long to respond. But, finally, a second message, “I want to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Akira sends back, but the only response he gets happens to be five words.

“8:00. Meet me at the park.”

What choice did he have? He meets him at the park at the appropriate time to find a tired and battered boy whom he barely recognizes to be his friend Goro Akechi. He has thousands of questions in his head, but before he can ask any of them, his friend smiles and explains, “I’m like a superhero.” 

“What’re you talking about?”

The other boy laughs, but it’s not the gentle chuckle he gives to teachers or the goofy giggle he has when talking about things he enjoys. There’s something else there that Akira can’t yet identify, “I can get rid of bad guys now.”

To say he was concerned for the other boy would have been an understatement. “Are you alright, Akechi?”

“Should I not be?”

Akira isn’t certain how to answer that. So once again, he avoids the question entirely, “Are you going to be at cram school tomorrow?”

“No. Summer’s almost over, and I’m moving away anyways.” He didn’t say his family was, just him. There was something deeper there, but his classmate had no idea of how to even approach the subject. 

“Is it alright if I still message you every once in a while?”

“Why?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

The question makes him furrow his brow, “We’re only that way because of convenience, aren’t we?”

“We’re still friends.”

There’s a pregnant pause that is heavy between the two of them, neither one of them daring to speak the first word. Finally, Goro dares to nod, saying, “If you want to, you can message me. I don’t know if I’ll answer, though.”

 

~~~~~

 

The prosecutor asks, “Is Goro Akechi one of your friends? One of the Phantom Thieves?”

“He’s a friend,” Akira answers, “but not a comrade. Not one of the Phantom Thieves.”

 

~~~~~

 

His phone buzzes in the middle of the night, which is unusual, given no one invites him out anymore. It’d been a long day. Not just because they’d spent so much time in Shido’s palace… but the fact that Goro Akechi had all but vanished. Until those last moments, did he ever really know him? Was him calling Akira attic trash and all that nonsense truly how he’d felt this entire time? He supposed that it didn’t much matter. He was gone, and this piece of attic trash wasn’t. And moreover, Akira had something he needed to do now, more than ever.

His phone buzzes next to him (a teammate, enthusiastically emphasizing how they just _had_ to send the calling card soon) and he opens his messages.

“It’s a good night,” accompanied by a picture near the Diet building, and an all-too familiar name.


End file.
